Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Today's List of Spanking Links

"There are only a few ways that a parent or caregiver
can respond to a child in moments of question or in need of discipline. These
methods first take place within the mind of the parent and lead to the actual
interaction between parent and child. I have placed them into three common
categories of punishment, permissiveness, and discipline. Punishment and
permissiveness can have similar underlying qualities of dis-empowerment for the
child and parent, but permissiveness can also be a bridge from punishment to
discipline at times when a parent is learning new techniques for
teaching."

"I might be able to sit him in time-out or yell at him
or spank him or take away his favorite toy or otherwise coerce him out of this
completely annoying habit, but in exchange for his compliance, I've lost an
opportunity to connect with my child."

"We finally understood that to parent is not to mold
and to push, but to nurture and protect. We understood that to parent we don’t
have to have all the answers. We do have to love. We may not understand, we may
get frustrated and even angry, but we always have to love."

"Today, physical punishment is considered too severe
for felons, murderers, criminals of all kinds and ages, including juvenile
delinquents; too demeaning for soldiers, sailors, servants and spouses. But it
remains legal and acceptable for children who are innocent of any crime."
- www.nopunish.net

“Sending children away to get control of their anger
perpetuates the feeling of 'badness" inside them...Chances are they were
already feeling not very good about themselves before the outburst and the
isolation just serves to confirm in their own minds that they were right.”
-Otto Weininger

"As our son's wailing continued, my husband suddenly
grabbed in a bear hug, and whispered calmly in his ear, "I love you,
Aydon." The horrible tantrum ceased immediately, like a hurricane that
miraculously evaporates, as Aydon reached out for a hug from his daddy."
*This goes along with what we've been saying..compassion, hugs, and "I
love you's" diffuse tantrums.* ~B

"We need to remember that our society has trained
people to disapprove of children doing what is healthy and natural. People
disapprove of horseplay, of noise, of exuberance, of too much laughter, of
tantrums, of crying, and of children asking for the attention they need. This
disapproval is out of line. Children are good. Their needs are legitimate,
including the need to offload bad feelings."

"Genuine cooperation comes from the heart. The only
cooperation worth having is that which is given freely by a child, not because
he has been frightened into obedience, but because he feels loved, respected,
and understood, and consequently wants to treat his parents with love and
respect in return."

"Really, stop and think about it for a minute. Is
obedience what you are striving for? If the grandest and best thing you can
wish for is to have an obedient child, then maybe training is the way to go
about it. But I don't think that is an appropriate goal for a human being. When
you train people to obey, you train them listen to their superiors rather than
to their instincts. They lose (or never gain) the ability to use common sense
or rational thinking to make decisions and instead they rely entirely on
instructions or advice from others to decide what to do. You train them to be
people pleasers, to be reliant on others for their own sense of
self-worth."

"Punishment means you cause pain or discomfort to
change the child’s behavior. And it works, in the short term and as long as you
hurt them enough so they don’t do it again and as long as they’re scared of
you. Read this last sentence and tell me it doesn’t sound absurd that you would
go down this path as a form of discipline? Where is the respect in this
relationship? There isn’t any."

"People often ask for alternatives to spanking. There
is no alternative to hitting children. If your goal is to help your child to
develop his autonomy you don't look for a means to making him/her obedient. And
this is the only thing you achieve with spanking - but only for a while. Later
the whole family will have to pay the price for their obedience. And this you
should know just from the first day of your child. Then it is up to you to make
the choice consciously."

Researchers found that kids who were held more by their
parents, whose cries received quick responses in infancy and who were
disciplined without corporal punishment were more empathic — that is, they were
better able to understand the minds of others — later in life.

"Children do as they see, not as they’re told. If you
want your child to be mindful of others, you must be mindful of others
yourself. If you want your child to by happy, you must smile without
hesitation. There is no one more influential to your child than you. At least
for now."

“Why is it so difficult to accept the importance of
readiness? Normally developing children do what they can do; they do not
withhold. Parents who expect their children to perform on a level the child has
not yet reached are creating failure and disappointment for both the children
and themselves. Don’t people realize how it possibly affects young children
when what they can do is not appreciated but what they cannot do is expected?”
– Magda Gerber

". . . if the choice is between a spanking and a time
out, I'd suggest the time out. But that's not the only choice! And both are
rooted in a punitive mindset. A punishment is something that is added on to
teaching to cause the child to feel bad with the underlying belief that only by
feeling bad can they learn. But, in fact, they learn lots of things without
feeling bad. They learn to walk and talk and spell their own name without
requiring punishment, so the argument that they can't learn if they don't feel
bad is completely unfounded." ~ Crystal Lutton

"Almost everyone in Western societies agrees that it is
morally wrong for people to settle arguments or impose their will on each other
with blows. When a big kid hits a little kid on the playground, we call him a
bully; five years later he punches a woman for her wallet and is called a
mugger; later still, when he slugs a fellow worker who insults him, he is
called a troublemaker, but when he becomes a father and hits his tiresome,
disobedient or disrespectful child, we call him a disciplinarian. Why is this rung
on a ladder of interpersonal violence regarded so differently from the
rest?" - Penelope Leach

"“Toddlers that are spanked more frequently at age 3
are at increased risk for being more aggressive at age 5,” said Taylor,
assistant professor of Community Health Sciences at Tulane and lead author of
the study. “We found this to be true even after taking into account other
factors that might have explained this association such as the parents’ level
of stress, depression, use of drugs or alcohol, and the presence of other
aggression within the family.”

"If we wish to have a strong, healthy, happy race of men, we should lay a
good foundation in the education of early childhood. We should avoid all means
of brutal, slavish training which cripple man's individuality, freedom, and
happiness. We should not use violence and fear. We should be careful to remove
from the children all that is brutal, ugly, vicious, and fearsome. We should
surround our young with the graceful, the true, the beautiful, the good, the
kind, the lovely, and the loving." - Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

But a growing body of research—and a new study from the
trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the
other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from
underperforming. It might actually be causing it:

"The reason praise can work in the short run is that
young children are hungry for our approval. But we have a responsibility not to
exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A "Good job!" to
reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of
taking advantage of children’s dependence. Kids may also come to feel
manipulated by this, even if they can’t quite explain why."

Link is NOT monetized. I make no money for sharing this, and
am just sharing so you can review the book. Is your child MORE? Find common
ground and great suggestions with this one. I've read it and would recommend
it: